7 Amazing WordPress Themes For Writers’ Blogs

Aside from the obvious marketing and advertising opportunities, a blog gives you a space to practice and hone your craft, connect directly with readers (both established and potential) and become part of a thriving community of writers and readers.

Why A Blog?

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The average reader is time-poor and choice-rich. Books are being published faster than anyone can read them, and there’s no doubt that some great books get lost in the ether.

But having a blog doesn’t just serve the readers – it’s also a great place to practice your writing and document your process.

It means that even if you are stuck on something, there are other avenues you can pursue that keep you writing. And having readers counting on your blog posts keeps you accountable to writing on a regular basis.

Choosing A Theme

One of the biggest challenges a writer, or anyone interested in having their own site for that matter, faces when starting a blog is choosing the right theme.

The internet is a visual place, judgementally so. And people, however fair or not, expect a certain level of design when they visit a site.

The beauty of WordPress is that you don’t need to be a graphic designer or a coder to create a good looking site. You just have to have the patience to scroll through the hundreds of themes available to you.

The catalogue of WordPress themes is overwhelming, to say the least. Just when you think you’ve gotten to the bottom of the page, it refreshes and presents you with a hundred more options.

And from this multitude you have to choose a theme that not only will you have to look at every day (if you’re disciplined), but your readers will have to look at also.

This is an important decision; as Cher from Clueless would say “you’ve seen how picky I am about my shoes and they only go on my feet”.

Your theme is as much about personal taste as it is about function – this is a representation of you, choose something you like the look of, something that allows you to be creative, but that doesn’t distract from your writing.

Too many photos and font options just add extra levels of procrastination that will cut into to your writing time.

Having said all that, it has to be functional. It’s easy to be seduced by all of the incredible-looking themes, but don’t forget that you have to use this.

A graphics-heavy blog theme is not going to look so great without all the beautiful photography, so if you don’t plan on taking photos, choose something with less emphasis on graphics.

To save your scrolling muscles and your valuable time, below is a list of 7 amazing WordPress themes that are great for writers of all genres and budgets.

The essence of clean and simple. The post formats allow all sorts of entries, be they long posts, text grabs or graphics, and the menu across the top of the front page provides easy navigation for your readers.

One of the best of the free themes for ascetic value. You can ‘stick’ your favourite posts to the front page, which gives you a level of control over what new visitors read first. While this is one of those themes that really needs photos to do it justice, you don’t need to be Ansel Adams to make it look good.

This theme is fairly graphics-heavy, so if you know that adding photos is something that will stress you out or will lead to intense procrastination, this is not the one for you. Despite this graphical element, the post format works well for long pieces.

Perfect for the self-promoter. Here, the focus is on you and what you’ve done and less about daily posts on the blog. There is still a blog component, but it also has much more capability for linking to events you’ll be attending, books, articles, pieces you’ve written, and just generally presenting you to the world.

This theme is all about the bling – the combination of text and graphics on the front page means not every post has to be an essay. You might just have a quick question for your readers or a short quote that you want to share – this theme is perfect for any length of post.

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These seven themes have barely scratched the surface of the theme pool, but hopefully there are some ideas in there to get you started.

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About The Author

Laura wore her 'I'd rather be reading' t-shirt with pride all through her young years, and while the t-shirt is long gone the sentiment still rings true. She started writing short stories as a precocious teen and has never lost the desire for writing to be a big part of her life. Since completing a Post-Grad Diploma in Writing, Editing and Publishing in 2010 she has been working as an editor, and recently started a blog where she writes about all things books and reading, which you can find here.

2 Comments

Kyra Bandte

Oooh, gotta love a good layout! I think a lot of people underestimate the need for an attractive website. Great post!

My personal preference for a writers’ website would be go for a minimalist look that isn’t too image-heavy. Some themes have large (‘hero’) images, or require a high number of images to fit the template of the page.

What you can end up doing is spending a lot time having to source/create images which can often be a labourious and tiresome process. Such imagery will also often distract from your writing, which is not good for obvious reasons!